Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
In early July, Meta introduced Threads, a text-posting social-media application that was clearly designed to steal market share from Twitter, which continues to struggle under the leadership of Elon Musk. Adam Mosseri, the executive in charge of Threads, recently explained that the goal of the service is “to create a public square for communities on…
While I think we can all agree that every app on our phone is probably an invasive little shit, I’d argue that weather apps deserve their own little corner in hell. We’ve seen weather apps sign folks up for services without their say-so, sneakily get location data from users who deliberately turned that function off,…
Photo: Richard Drew (AP) MoviePass, the ticketing startup that burned through hundreds of millions of dollars trying to undercut the theater business by selling tickets at cost to subscribers, has screwed up an awful lot as of late. Its parent company Helios & Matheson is being sued by shareholders for alleged fraud, as well as…
Their romance began on a server at a San Francisco startup. Anna Wood had submitted a profile to the League, a dating app aimed at young professionals. She was the perfect prospect: Degree from a top university? Check. Management-track job at a marquee company? Check. Carefully selected profile pictures and a winning smile? Check and check….
When you consider react-text: 249 the nagging privacy risks of online advertising, you may find comfort in the thought of a vast, abstract company like Pepsi or Nike viewing you as just one data point among millions. What, after all, do you have to hide from Pepsi? And why should that corporate megalith care about…
One of the lesser-known casualties of Newt Gingrich’s ghoulish Contract with America was the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), a small government agency charged with producing impartial reports for Congress and other officials about issues of scientific and technological concern. From 1972 until 1995, the OTA produced studies, often with the help of academic experts,…
The Apple TV has a new app, called simply TV, that promises to help make sense of the 1600 video content providers that have apps on the platform. It looks useful and great, but it’s missing two key pieces toward becoming a truly useful streaming sifter: Netflix and Amazon. Amazon’s absence is no surprise, given…